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ABSTRACT
In jail in South Africa in January 1908, Mahatma Gandhi was served a South African breakfast staple known as mealie pap. Gandhi associated mealie pap with black South Africans and rejected it as unsuitable for Indians. One year later, however, he revised his opinion and actively encouraged Indians to eat mealie pap. Tracing Gandhi’s evolving approach to mealie pap reveals a profound shift in Gandhi’s views on race and diet. That shift was made visible some thirty years later when Gandhi turned to the African American scientist George Washington Carver in order to find a vegan alternative to milk.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jeffrey M. Pilcher and the editorial team at Global Food History, especially Jayeeta (Jo) Sharma, whose suggestions greatly improved an early draft of this article. I would also like to thank John Soluri, Therese Tardio, and the anonymous readers who commented on the article and the larger manuscript from which it stems, The Mango and the Mahatma: Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet, which will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2019.
Notes
1. “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG). In this article, all citations without a stated author were written by Gandhi and are included in the CWMG. I found many of these sources by searching the online version of the CWMG available here: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/cwmg/cwmg.htm. There are significant problems with the online version of the CWMG that are discussed in detail here: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/cwmg/cwmg_controversy.htm. Many readers will find it easiest to locate particular writings of Gandhi in the online version of the CWMG, but the most complete and authoritative version of the CWMG remains the original printed version.
2. Hobart, “A ‘Queer-looking Compound’”; “My Gaol Experiences [1],” March 7, 1908. On culinary nostalgia, see Sen, “Food, Place, and Memory”; Swislocki, Culinary Nostalgia.
3. “My Second Experience in Gaol,” Indian Opinion, January 2, 1909; Guha, Gandhi Before India, 398.
4. Gandhi’s critics often understate the evolution of Gandhi’s views on race, an evolution tied to his changing views on diet. See, for example, Desai and Vahed, The South African Gandhi. Also see Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens; Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience.
5. That conservatism is evident in Gandhi’s views on caste as well as class. See Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism. Of the hundreds of biographies written about Gandhi, nearly all mention his obsession with food but only a few examine that obsession in any detail. The most detailed studies include Alter, Gandhi’s Body; Roy, Alimentary Tracts.
6. Ray, The Ethnic Restaurateur; Maxwell and DeSoucey, “Gastronomic Cosmopolitanism”; Cappeliez and Johnston, “From Meat and Potatoes”; Green, “Kebabs and Port Wine”; Jhala, “Cosmopolitan Kitchens”; Black, “Recipes for Cosmopolitanism”; Mannur, Culinary Fictions, 204; Heldke, Exotic Appetites; Narayan, Dislocating Cultures, 178–180.
7. Vodeb, Food Democracy; Kimura and Suryanata, Food and Power in Hawai’i; Hassanein, “Practicing Food Democracy,” 79; Lang, “Food Policy for the 21st Century”; Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” 80.
8. Mager, Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa, 4 and 18; “The Beer Monopoly,” http://www.sahistory.org.za/beer-monopoly; McAllister, Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals; Steinkraus, Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods, 407–412; Taylor, “A Black Success Story Brewing in South Africa.”
9. The problematic history of the word “curry” is discussed later in this essay. Kraig and Sen, Street Food Around the World, 306, 307; Desai and Vahed, “Between Apartheid and Neoliberalism”; D’Sylva and Beagan, “‘Food Is Culture, But It’s Also Power.’”
10. See Slate, The Mango and the Mahatma.
11. “My Gaol Experiences [II],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “Starvation of Passive Resisters,” Indian Opinion, February 26, 1910.
12. Long, Jainism: An Introduction; Chapple, Jainism and Ecology.
13. “Interview to The Vegetarian – II”, The Vegetarian, June 20, 1891; Gandhi, My Experiments With Truth, 60, 61; Guha, Gandhi Before India, 41.
14. Gandhi, “Ahimsa and Other Animals”; Hay, “The Making of a Late-Victorian Hindu,” 89, 90; Hunt, Gandhi in London, 221; Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History; Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution; Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, 297, 298.
15. “Letter to Maganlal Gandhi,” about 1914; “An Experiment in Vital Food,” March 24, The Vegetarian, 1894; “Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi,” April 24, 1912; Meyer-Renschausen, “The Porridge Debate.”
16. Scrinis, Nutritionism. Also see “The Plague Panic in South Africa,” The Times of India, April 22, 1899; “My Gaol Experiences [1],” March 7, 1908; “My Gaol Experiences [II],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “Interview to D.A. Rees,” before March 26, 1908.
17. “Petition to Director of Prisons”, January 21, 1908; “My Gaol Experiences [1],” March 7, 1908; “Interview to D.A. Rees,” before March 26, 1908.
18. “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “Johannesburg Letter,” undated but completed September 23, 1908.
19. “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “Johannesburg Letter,” undated but completed September 23, 1908.
20. “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “Johannesburg Letter,” before July 2, 1908; “Johannesburg Letter,” August 1, 1908.
21. “Letter to the Transvaal Leader,” August 8, 1908.
22. “My Gaol Experiences [II],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908 and “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “My Second Experience in Gaol,” Indian Opinion, January 2, 1909.
23. One Jain spiritual practice involves eating bland and unappealing food known as ayambila in order to discipline the palate. See Cort, Jains in the World, 118–141. Also see Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food, 4; “My Gaol Experiences [II],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “My Experience in Gaol [III],” Indian Opinion, March 21, 1908; “My Second Experience in Gaol,” Indian Opinion, January 2, 1909.
24. “General Knowledge About Health [X],” Indian Opinion, March 8, 1913.
25. “Who Can Go to Gaol?” Indian Opinion, June 5, 1909; “Report of Protector of Indentured Labourers,” Indian Opinion, August 27, 1910; Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, 72.
26. “Phoenix School,” Indian Opinion, January 9, 1909; “Letter to H.S.L. Polak,” August 26, 1911; “Report of Protector of Indentured Labourers,” Indian Opinion, August 27, 1910; “General Knowledge About Health,” Indian Opinion, March 8, 1913. Not all cocoa production occurred in large-scale, hyper-exploitative situations. Some cocoa was produced under small-holder systems. See Berry, Cocoa, Customs, and Socio-Economic Change; Norton, “Tasting Empire”; Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures.
27. “Vegetarianism in Natal,” The Vegetarian, December 21, 1895.
28. “From Slave to College President,” Indian Opinion, October 9, 1903; Guha, Gandhi Before India, 175.
29. Young India, October 6, 1921; “Letter to Narahari Parikh,” February 13, 1920; “Speech at Meeting of London Vegetarian Society,” November 20, 1931; “Speech at Meeting of London Vegetarian Society,” November 20, 1931.
30. Quoted in Weber, On the Salt March, 429.
31. Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk, 11; Valenze, Milk: A Local and Global History; Wiley, “Milk for ‘Growth’”; Dupuis, Nature’s Perfect Food; Mahias, “Milk and its Transmutations in Indian Society”; “Key to Health,” December 18, 1942.
32. Lal, “Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya”; Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor, 35; Sharma, Gandhi: A Spiritual Biography, 43–45; Roy, Alimentary Tracts, 112; “Raw V. Cooked Food,” Navajivan, June 16, 1929.
33. “Letter to Maganlal Gandhi,” October 25, 1914; “Letter to Maganlal Gandhi,” December 10, 1914.
34. “Letter to Ranchhodlal Patwari,” June 10, 1915; “Letter to Maganbhai H. Patel,” December 12, 1915; Polak, Mr Gandhi: The Man, 70–87. Also see Guha, Gandhi Before India, 199, 200.
35. Gandhi, Autobiography and Gandhi, Key to Health, December 18, 1942. In the autobiography, the idea comes from Kasturba and the doctor merely echoes it. In the Key to Health, it is the doctor that suggests goat’s milk and Kasturba who seconds the idea.
36. Key to Health, December 18, 1942; “Letter to Haribhau Upadhyaya,” July 12, 1929; “General Knowledge About Health [XIII],” Indian Opinion, March 29, 1913; “Letter to Bhaishir Chhaganlal,” December 10, 1928; “Letter to Rameshchandra,” December 13, 1927, “Letter to Mahadev Desai,” November 30, 1928; “Letter to Richard B. Gregg,” January 28, 1929; “Some Questions,” Navajivan, September 27, 1925; “Letter to a Friend,” August 9, 1918.
37. “Key to Health,” December 18, 1942; “Letter to P.C. Ray,” August 27, 1918; “General Knowledge About Health [XIII],” Indian Opinion, March 29, 1913.
38. Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 101–107; Mazumdar, “The Impact of New World Food Crops.”
39. “Says Gandhi Gets Strength From Peanuts,” Norfolk Journal & Guide, April 24, 1937; “Letter to P.C. Ray,” August 27, 1918.
40. “Letter to Franklin Roosevelt,” July 1, 1942; Mahadev Desai, “British and American Nazism,” Harijan, February 15, 1942. Also see Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 101–107 and 134.
41. Miller, Soul Food, 2; Wallach, “Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop,” 166. Also see Twitty, The Cooking Gene; Harris, High on the Hog; Opie, Hog and Hominy; Bower, African American Foodways.
42. Ganguly, “Global State of War,” 3; Kumar, Radical Equality; Skaria, Unconditional Equality.
43. Gandhi’s debt to the legacy of Booker T. Washington reveals the centrality of African Americans to the global history of overlapping diasporas. See Lewis, “To Turn as on a Pivot.” Also see Begin, Taste of the Nation, 137; Johnston and Baumann, Foodies: Democracy and Distinction, 106, 107.
44. Nayar, Packaging Life: Cultures, 173; Sharma, “Food and Empire,” 242; Maroney, “To Make a Curry the India Way”; Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks”; Leong-Salobir, Food Culture in Colonial Asia; Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks, 251; Burton, The Raj at Table.
45. Slocum, “Race in the Study of Food,” 27; Longhurst and Johnston, “Dishing Up Difference,” 210. On the rich diversity of “Indian” food, see Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion; Sen, Food Culture in India; Ray, “New Directions of Research on Indian Food”; Ray and Srinivas, Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food; Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine.”